Rate Article:

A pro-Democrat wing of the Internet recently featured a video featuring George W. Bush as the lesser of a few bad things. (AFP/File)

An ad from the Democratic National Committee aired earlier this month shows not a single Democrat. Instead, each of the Republican presidential candidates are featured, followed by, low and behold, George W. Bush as the closer.

Before this bombshell, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz are all quoted in video interviews or on the phone echoing the sound bite “radical Islam.”

Clips of theRepublican candidates are set in contrast the former US president’s final statements in an attempt to demonstrate the differences between Bush himself and today’s Republican frontrunners. So maybe it’s a good indicator of the times (ahem), that the Democrats are using the president responsible for both of the longest US foreign occupations since the VIetnam War as an example of how the Republican party used to be better.

Let that just sink in.

Amid clips of current conservative candidates, Bush is shown saying, “the war against terrorism is not a war against Muslims. Nor is it a war against Arabs. It’s a war against evil people who conduct crimes against innocent people.”

Words across a black background end the ad as the DMC claims, “inciting fear isn’t presidential.”

The ad has been criticized for being “tone-deaf” in the wake of the Paris attacks and other Daesh (ISIS) atrocities earlier this month. And a Rasmussen poll released on the same day as the video showed 60 percent of respondents “believe the United States is at war with radical Islamic terrorism.”

When the poll was broken down, 56 percent of democrats agreed. So, it seems like pointing fingers at the Republicans isn’t actually telling the whole story.

Nevertheless, especially in light of Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s trip to Jordan this week (which was a little tone deaf itself), it seems noteworthy that the Republicans of today are being held up as a bad example of Islamophobia against the likes of Bush—a short jaunt into history shows why.

And in begs the question, are we in an era where Bush is the best example of smart policies toward the Middle East and Muslim world?